


Enhancing Organizational Productivity

by raspberryhunter



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, F/F, Gen, Human Resources, Ratings: PG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Destiny starts to run diagnostics on another member of the crew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enhancing Organizational Productivity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Allerleirauh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allerleirauh/gifts).



> Same warnings as for SGU itself. Nothing explicit.
> 
> Many and profuse thanks to my beta sprocket for (as usual) not letting me get away with anything!

Camile Wray stretches, looking away from the computer screen and the reports she's typing. She can imagine what Young would say if he saw her doing this, how he would shake his head at her performing bureaucratic duties so many light-years away from the entities who would require it of them. The corner of her mouth turns up wryly. If he does not want to avail himself of the opportunity to organize his thoughts, to distill all they have learned over the months of the men and women of Destiny, that's his problem, not hers.

If only she were able to neatly classify and organize her own life in the same way. She knows that Sharon is now talking to Eli's mother. Sharon is happier. She is. She is drinking less, getting more research done, going out with friends more. She was doing much better on Camile's last communication-stone visit. _You’re here. That’s all that matters._ She drums her fingers on the table, a quick restless rhythm. It’s not all that matters, she knows.

The door swishes open. Camile snaps, "Yes?" without raising her eyes. 

"Camile," a voice says, a soft, musical voice: a voice she knows very, very well.

Camile gets up from her seat so suddenly that she bangs her leg against the table. "Sharon," whispers Camile -- and stops. She thinks wildly of the communication stones; somehow they've figured out how to do more than communicate, they were able to bring Sharon to the Destiny -- 

No. No. She is going to be sensible about this. If, somehow, her partner had been able to come through the stones -- and Camile knows better than anyone else the layers of bureaucracy that would have to be involved -- she would not wear Sharon's face, nor would she speak with Sharon's voice. No, this is something else.

Sharon waits patiently, not saying anything, while Camile closes her eyes, tries to marshal her whirling thoughts. Is she going mad? Is it a kind of vision, perhaps? Vision, vision -- she just wrote that word in a report. TJ. Her baby. _I don't know if it was a dream, a vision maybe._

And Young: the dreams the ship inflicted upon him, until she and Rush were able to galvanize Lieutenant Scott into prodding Young back into action. (In retrospect, she doesn't think that was Rush's goal. _Lieutenant, you have to assume command officially._ She thinks Rush probably did mean what he said, even though anyone who had seen Scott and Young together should have known that Scott never, not in a million years, would have usurped Young's place.)

TJ. Young. And now Camile herself. "You're -- Destiny," Camile breathes. "A simulation, an artificial intelligence."

Sharon looks distressed, and even though Camile knows with her head that it is not really Sharon, her heart still hurts. "The diagnostics," the woman says, with exactly that crease on her forehead that Sharon gets when she is frustrated, "do not work if the subject does not believe. I have learned this from Nicholas Rush."

"You've appeared to Dr. Rush?" Of course it has, Camile realizes, even before Sharon -- no, the Destiny -- nods. Probably around the same time everyone started noticing Rush acting secretive and cranky. More so than usual, that is. 

She tries to calm herself, tries to think again about what the AI has said. The subject must _believe._ The best way to get a person to believe something, of course, is to wrap it in something the believer feels strongly about. Hence TJ and her child. She shivers, thinking of Young's dreams of the ship’s destruction. And Rush -- for Rush, it must have been his lover or, no, wait, she's read his personnel file. A cold knot of dread settles in the pit of her stomach. His _dead wife_ , of course the ship would use that. This cannot in the least be good for his already-dubious sanity.

They have been very lucky so far, she thinks, feeling a cold sweat on the back of her neck. Very lucky, that the ship's manifestations did not drive anyone mad, or kill them -- _except for Franklin_ , whispers a thought in the back of her head. "Of course, you did not have anyone's consent to do this --"

She realizes her mistake when the AI asks curiously, "Consent? Consent would imply consciousness of the diagnostics, and this makes them less effective. I do not understand."

The AI doesn’t understand. The AI has no _idea_.

Who is next? If the AI decides to talk to Greer next, what might the AI get Greer to _believe_? She remembers Greer staring at her down the barrel of his pistol as the blood dripped through her fingers, the sharp pain in her chest where the knife sliced into her, she cannot go back to that, she cannot do this --

There are so many horrifying possibilities; if the Destiny had appeared to the very unstable Commander Kiva, when the Lucian Alliance was taking over the ship, it could have been blood and disaster, bullets and knives not just for her, but for everyone on the ship, blood splashed on the walls, bodies on the floor, and for an agonizing second there is a detailed image in her head, a terrible picture of exactly how it could have been – 

Her breath stops. Pictures.

_Visions._

The subject must believe. If Kiva believed in some horrifying violent future, a future of blood and madness and death, if Kiva was _made to believe_ in such a future --

They came so close to catastrophe. And maybe she knows why. "Did you –“ She pauses, not knowing if she wants to know the answer. “Did you appear to Kiva?"

"Yes," the AI says serenely, "and the first-level diagnostics were run successfully on her, but the outcome for the Lucian Alliance was negative."

It was all the AI’s doing. Camile feels her heart skip a beat. Did Kiva ever know, ever suspect at all, that she was being manipulated by another intelligence? She finds herself wondering how the AI appeared to Kiva. A parent, a child, a friend? A trusted lover, with a familiar face and terribly alien motivations?

Camile stares at the AI, at Sharon’s innocent eyes looking straight at her. Sharon! she wails inside her head, seeing her beloved’s face and hearing her voice being used for another being’s ends —

Seeing a face that’s different from the person behind it —

Unbidden, image of Sharon come to her. Sharon, laughing a little too loudly. Sharon, gulping the wine a little too fast, a little too carelessly. The muffled ragged sobbing breaths into the pillow when she thinks Camile has fallen asleep.

Sharon, looking at Camile and seeing Airman Phillips; spooning a mouthful of food into Amanda Perry’s mouth (but it’s still Camile inside, though not her skin, not her spine, not her face; the quizzical grief in Sharon’s eyes) -- _I look at you, and I know it’s you, but still…_ It’s not all that matters.

—The mismatch between physical and emotional, between lover and stranger: this is only the dark side of what she’s asked Sharon to do all along. Oh Sharon, Camile thinks, you were always the stronger of the two of us, always. And I never understood, this whole time, exactly how strong you were.

Sharon has lived with this mismatch for years now, has found her way to being herself even through this; surely, so can Camile. Sharon has showed her the way.

She can do this. She can. 

Her fists slowly clench, below the table where the AI cannot see. She will not allow the AI to visit ruin and insanity on anyone else on the crew, if she can stop it. But her only tools are words. 

No, no, she isn't thinking clearly. She reaches for routine, for habit, to reorient herself. "I'm sorry," she says automatically, "sit down." She gestures at a second seat to the side of her table, placed there for visitors. She tries to think of the entity across the table as a person like any of the others who have sat across the desk from her over the years. Not Sharon. "How can I help you?"

"How can you help me," the woman repeats questioningly. Sharon's face gets an odd expression on it, as if she's trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. "No one has ever asked me that," she says softly.

Okay. Camile feels herself settling into her accustomed role. She is a human resource manager, a negotiator, and she is damned good at her job. It’s time she acted like it. "Let me tell you what I'd like -- Destiny? Should I call you that?"

The other woman turns Sharon's wrist, raising her palm in a gesture of acquiescence. "Destiny is sufficient, yes. Or Sharon. Either will do."

"Destiny," Camile says firmly. "I'd like for us to come to an understanding that we're both happy with. I think we may well have common goals. I'd like to hear about your goals. I'd like to know what we can do to further them, and then we can talk about how you can further ours as well."

Sharon's face harbors just the slightest hint of confusion. "Understanding? Of me? My -- goals?"

"Destiny's goals," Camile encourages. "The -- diagnostics you are running must have something to do with them. I assume these are for, ah, furthering your mission. I understand from Dr. Rush that you have a scientific mission. How can we help you fulfill it?"

The woman answers, "I have been seeking for a group of sentients who desires to carry out the mission as I do. And I need protection from others who would prevent me from carrying it out."

Camile gives Destiny a brief tense smile. "Good! Some of our goals coincide. We would like to find a way home -- that is one of our primary goals -- but it is true that some of us desire to carry out the mission as you do. And others of us seek to protect." She hesitates. "But if you have been in the minds of Dr. Rush and Colonel Young, then you know that."

Sharon's head nods eagerly. "Yes."

"So," Camile says, clearly and precisely, knowing that she is walking a tightrope with this alien being, hoping that this is the right way to reach her, "you already have your answer. You do not need to run your diagnostics to know that we share your concerns. You already know."

"The diagnostics," Destiny says, sounding slightly frustrated, "would give more information --"

"Except," Camile says gently, "that they haven't been giving you more information, have they? We don't seem to react well to the diagnostics. Sometimes our minds become destabilized by them. And, Destiny -- if our minds become destabilized, it could jeopardize your mission. We are your crew at present, and if we are not working effectively, we cannot carry out your mission or protect you."

It's all truth, what she's saying. She pours all her energy into keeping her face open and friendly, as much as she can. “If you asked for my advice, I would advise you to -- to stop running diagnostics on the crew, to stop interfering, at least until we all understand more about how we react. So as to maximize the help we can be to you.”

Camile looks at Sharon’s face, and shudders very slightly, knowing that she can read the tiniest of expressions the AI has taken from her own mind, the way the corners of her eyes crinkle, the way her lips quirk. But she thinks she is correctly reading what she sees there, that the other woman wants to be convinced. She is very close to persuading her; she must hold to that. 

"So you can help me," Destiny says, almost wonderingly.

"For the sake of the mission," Camile says gently. She does not believe in Rush's mission -- she only wants to go home -- but she knows that Rush himself is driven by his belief in Destiny’s mission, that the whole scientific team believes in it, and that Destiny itself must know it.

"For the sake of the mission," the woman across the table repeats. It rises. "I will cease. I will no longer appear to the crew like this to run diagnostics, not until we understand how to do it without destabilizing your minds."

Camile breathes a sigh of relief. Sharon's figure nods to her, gives her a brilliant smile that despite all her resolve almost makes her break out in tears, and pauses. 

"Wait," says Destiny. The woman lifts a hand, as if to touch Camile, but drops it again. Camile is glad, because she does not want to have to flinch away from something that approximates Sharon's touch but is not. The AI continues: "One more thing. When I showed myself to this ship's leader, its scientists, its healer -- they either did not know who I was, or they feared me. You knew who I was, you asked to -- help me. How can this be?"

Camile smiles at her sadly. There is so much she will not tell this woman with her beloved's face: how much she loves Sharon; that she knows how hard it is, the division between the mental and the physical; to be there in heart, but transiently, and not in the body... This is not Sharon, and never was. But despite everything, she finds she wants to give the AI an answer.

"I'm HR. That's what we _do_."


End file.
